or other disagreeable subjects, is sure to follow!"

"Death! No, Dick--not now. Marriage-bells and joy, Dick! We shall have a
wedding!"

"What! You will marry at last! And it must be that beautiful Caroline
Lyndsay! It must--it must! You can never love another! You know it, my
dear, dear master. I shall see you, then, happy before I die."

"Tut, foolish old friend!" said Darrell, leaning his aria tenderly on
Fairthorn's shoulder, and walking on slowly towards the house. "How
often must I tell you that no Marriage-bells can ring for me!"

"But you have told me, too, that you went to Twickenham to steal a sight
of her again; and that it was the sight of her that made you resolve to
wed no one else. And when I have railed against her for fickleness, have
you not nearly frightened me out of my wits, as if no one might rail
against her but yourself? And now she is free--and did you not grant
that she would not refuse your hand, and would be true and faithful
henceforth? And yet you insist on being--granite."

"No, Dick, not granite; I wish I were."

"Granite and pride," persisted Dick, courageously. "If one chips a bit
off the granite, one only breaks one's spade against the pride."

"Pride--you too!" muttered Darrell, mournfully; then aloud: "No, it is
not pride now, whatever it might have been even yesterday. But I
would rather be racked by all the tortures that pious inquisitors ever
invented out of compassion for obstinate heretics, than condemn the
woman I have so fatally loved to a penance the misery of which she
cannot foresee. She would accept me?--certainly! Why! Because she thinks
she owes me reparation--because she pities me. And my heart tells me
that I might become cruel, and mean, and vindictive, if I were to live
day by day with one who created in me, while my life was at noon, a love
never known in its morn, and to feel that that love's sole return was
the pity vouchsafed to the nightfall of my age. No; if she pitied,
but did not love me, when, eighteen years ago, we parted under yonder
beech-tree, I should be a dotard to dream that woman's pity mellows into
love as our locks become grey, and Youth turns our vows into ridicule.
It is not pride that speaks here; it is rather humility, Dick. But we
must not now talk of old age and bygones. Youth and marriage-bells,
Dick! Know that, I have been for hours pondering how to reconcile with
my old-fashioned notions dear Lionel's happiness. We must think of the